Friday, July 18, 2008

Fitz on Cook County Jail

I haven't read it yet but I know a guy who refused 180 days community service and took ten days at the House instead. A big mistake even though ten days got reduced to a weekend to get inmates out quickly.

Years ago I tutored inmates with Safer Foundation. I was leaning by an open, but still barred and screened, door to a fire escape because the airconditioning had broken. A inmate casually told me I might get shot by guards and should step away from the door. The casual way he mentioned my getting shot has stuck with me.

In a scathing report released Thursday, federal authorities said that a culture exists at Cook County Jail in which inmates are systematically beaten by guards and medical care is so substandard that some inmates have died.

In the 98-page report, the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division called the complex violent and pointed to a raft of problems ranging from unsanitary conditions to inadequate mental health care and suicide-prevention measures.

At a news conference, U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald called on the Cook County Board and Sheriff Tom Dart to fix a dangerous jail that is "woefully inadequate."